Punks on Phil, two minutes later, Punks on Phil! (1984)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGOQUahAmxg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cUBV1qSzwU

There were all sorts of "punks" in the eighties. You had everyone from violent drug addicts with swastika tattoos to the mild mannered hipster kids on the Donahue panel. Political views ran from nationalist skinheads to pacifist peace punks.

And of course they put Al Jourgensen up there in drag. At that time his big Ministry single was Revenge, in which he and his bandmate fry a woman in the electric chair.

The constant pigenholing and poseur McCarthyism made me swear in 1985 never to identify as "punk."

People would ask, "Well, if you're not a punk, and you're not a metalhead, and your not a homo, what are you?" "I'm just an individual being whatever the hell he wants to be on any given day. Deal with it," I'd say.

That sounds hokey, but it beat calling yourself "punk" and having the other 15 so-called punks in county come up with reasons to call you a poseur. You can see from the Donahue audience how much more easily shocked folks were 30 years ago. Now the cashiers at Hole Foods wear facial piercings, metallic dye jobs, and neck tattoos!

Notice the name of the broad at the end of the part I, the founder of Parents of Punkers. Her last name is "Dank." I wonder if she's who Jellio Biafra was referring to when he said on "No More Cocoons: "A danky old maid on Phil Donahue confirmed our fears; it's that devil-rcok music you and your friends listen to!"

And that's the perfect segue for Part II of Eighties punk angst: Jello Biafra's monologue "May All Your Dreams Be Wonderful" (1987)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTfdDk0duSg

As for me, I had just the one earring, and the only crimes I committed were truancy and smoking a little grass. I was hospitalized at Charles River, Wellesley, at 16 for being depressed. Seven weeks and $21,000 of family insurance money later, I was no better for it, and the shrinks told my parents I was soon to turn suicidal and "schizzy" :)

There were all sorts of "punks" in the eighties. You had everyone from violent drug addicts with swastika tattoos to the mild mannered hipster kids on the Donahue panel. Political views ran from nationalist skinheads to pacifist peace punks.

That's kinda the problem - anyone who was actually punk wasn't watching Donahue. (Which was itself part of the problem - people who watched Donahue didn't exactly get punk.) The reaction of your typical suburbanite to punk was like like that of a religious fundamentalist to Dungeons and Dragons: to fear what they couldn't understand, and to categorize all forms of it into one big bag of terrifyingness.

The reaction of your typical suburbanite to punk was like like that of a religious fundamentalist to Dungeons and Dragons: to fear what they couldn't understand, and to categorize all forms of it into one big bag of terrifyingness.

Excellent analysis. And Donahue wanted to ensure that fear would grow, not in himself, but in his watchers. He made them out a whole lot worse then even they themselves could imagine to be.

That's kinda the problem - anyone who was actually punk wasn't watching Donahue. (Which was itself part of the problem - people who watched Donahue didn't exactly get punk.)

Punks with a sense of irony watched Donahue. And for what it's worth Donahue was a helluva lot more punk than Kurt Loder and MTV!

I'm nostalgic for the days when my arch enemies were the vice principal and Tipper Gore.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_SiOnt_OxoFor the, ahem, record, Tipper Gore and her pals were total censorship monkeys because the azzwholes in charge always feel entitled to tell the little people how to think and what to think about. My take on Tipper was that she was a naive Southern belle who sincerely thought it was the government's job to "save our children from this rock-porn" as Sen Fritz Hollings (D-SC) put it, but guys like Hollings hadn't even listened to a rock 'n roll song since "Ain't Nothing but a Hound Dog," and the low hanging cash was from the Eagle Forum and Coors beer. Problem? Yes. Now you're in bed with Christian Right mind control fanatics and white supremacists.

Most of what the PMRC went after was hardcore punk and heavy metal and I didn't care for most of that stuff either. However, it seemed to me at the time that punk and metal didn't advocate violence as a solution to problems, unlike the pro-wrestling and those godawful Sylvester Stallone movies, which the Right seemed to like just fine.

So that's what made Tipper Gore any easy enemy when I was 17. She was a senator's wife, shallow, dumb, and bleach blonde. On top of that, she didn't eve know her subject in the limited capacity it would take to argue with Jello.

Anyway, I was going into Cambridge and buying records by the Butthole Surfers, Foetus, and Coil and somehow the PMRC missed them!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU-rSALDwvE

Everyone else who listened to Coil in 1986 is dead now, including Coil. :(

Everyone else who listened to Coil in 1986 is dead now, including Coil. :(

(It was a long shot, but I looked anyways. You'll be relieved to know that nobody's ponified Horse Rotorvator yet. But that's not because they're dead, it's because most of 'em hadn't even been born. So I'll go with something else.)

On a more serious note, there was a real explosion of creativity that came out of punk in the late 70s/early 80s. It was right about then that artists as diverse as (pre-Heart of Glass) Blondie ceased being punk to become New Wave, and the people behind Coil (er, Psychic TV) shifted gears from thee punk scene and became Industrial.

(It was a long shot, but I looked anyways. You'll be relieved to know that nobody's ponified Horse Rotorvator yet. But that's not because they're dead, it's because most of 'em hadn't even been born. So I'll go with something else.)

On a more serious note, there was a real explosion of creativity that came out of punk in the late 70s/early 80s. It was right about then that artists as diverse as (pre-Heart of Glass) Blondie ceased being punk to become New Wave, and the people behind Coil (er, Psychic TV) shifted gears from thee punk scene and became Industrial.